What else would they change? Such a simple/boring hero can't really be changed much other than to be more RNG.

I don't know, I didn't think she needed changes to begin with. It's why I can't figure out why the hell they'd make that change - if she's weak, the solution is to make her even more reliant on a coinflip?

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

How is she reliant on coinflip? PA gets a lot of attack speed from Blink Strike, combined with Stifling Dagger or any other disable she should get plenty of hits in in a short time like BKB duration. Surely you can have shit luck and not crit at all or have great luck and crit every other hit, but most of the time you'll stay within standard deviation.

Relying on high crits is basically the essence of the hero, so what you're looking at is a buff to her damage. Perhaps in response so some heroes getting their armor or health buffed, or to give her targets smaller margin to wait for the crit before using a defensive ability or escape.

How is she reliant on coinflip? PA gets a lot of attack speed from Blink Strike, combined with Stifling Dagger or any other disable she should get plenty of hits in in a short time like BKB duration. Surely you can have shit luck and not crit at all or have great luck and crit every other hit, but most of the time you'll stay within standard deviation.

Yeah, but it still becomes coinflippy on a case-by-case basis - I've seen PA get no crits for three solid seconds, and I've seen her blow someone up with the first hit. Over the course of a game it's no more random than stout shield/vanguard, Axe's helix, etc, but on an individual basis it's still coinflippy. That's always been the reason I've heard trotted out for why pros don't seem to consider using her much.

Relying on high crits is basically the essence of the hero, so what you're looking at is a buff to her damage. Perhaps in response so some heroes getting their armor or health buffed, or to give her targets smaller margin to wait for the crit before using a defensive ability or escape.

Why not improve the chance of crit, then, to make it less likely her first swing (maybe the only swing she'll get) fizzles?

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

Well, I would prefer if they changed all RNG heroes, for the most part, in some manner. A dice roll should never be allowed to determine games on a competitive level, but there is no way to keep things interesting without it. It already exists in variable auto attack damage, somewhat in automatic creep behavior, in rune spawns, etc.

Still, it is absurdly annoying to run up and impale/finger a 300 health void only for him to walk away with....300 health. But of course when you play him you die every time.

I personally like it, it's a part of particular heroes' flair. Chaos knight for example, damage variance and low crit chance with huge multiplier sometimes makes you able to solo the opposing team, and sometimes you fail 1v1, but he's supposed to be "chaotic". If they get picked for tournament play, there's always risk/reward factor which we need more of (I hate universal heroes like invoker, he has damage, regen, incredible skill set an he's ranged to boot, more specialized heroes would promote more teamplay and importance of items in my opinion). Hell, we could even see more dynamic metagame, instead of same picks/bans every tournament.

It's not bad when it's a fairly decent chance and reliable. Headshot, for example, no one complains about. It's very annoying but at roughly a 1/2 chance per shot you can expect it to hit you all the time so there's never a OMGWTF moment. The lower the % chance gets the more ridiculously annoying the procs are. Take Gambler, for example.

Well, I would prefer if they changed all RNG heroes, for the most part, in some manner. A dice roll should never be allowed to determine games on a competitive level, but there is no way to keep things interesting without it. It already exists in variable auto attack damage, somewhat in automatic creep behavior, in rune spawns, etc.

Still, it is absurdly annoying to run up and impale/finger a 300 health void only for him to walk away with....300 health. But of course when you play him you die every time.

This! I must have done some messed up shit to the RNG gods in a earlier life.. i never get a procc when i need it

When i play syllabear i can chase a person around the entire map and get one procc maybe.. When i am up against a syllabear i am constantly rooted..

Well, I would prefer if they changed all RNG heroes, for the most part, in some manner. A dice roll should never be allowed to determine games on a competitive level, but there is no way to keep things interesting without it. It already exists in variable auto attack damage, somewhat in automatic creep behavior, in rune spawns, etc.

Still, it is absurdly annoying to run up and impale/finger a 300 health void only for him to walk away with....300 health. But of course when you play him you die every time.

Shackleshot's that way for me. Setup a perfect shackle a tree right in the sweet spot and it doesn't latch, but an enemy WR will latch you to a tree directly behind you that's eighty feet away. Something about sacrificing a small woodland creature to the God of Bullshit Shackles. Same thing applies to Chaos Knight - if you're playing him, it's always a 2 second stun. If it's an enemy, it's always a 4 second stun. Axe, too - you go five seconds without a spin, enemy Axe spins every single time someone even looks at him funny.

At any rate, why do people think Viper's a weak hero? I agree he can't out-carry a hard carry like Void or AM or whoever, but literally everything he does slows move speed and attack speed, he basically gets a free Hood, and his ulti slows attack and move speeds by 80% and while the damage gets blocked, he can still use it against someone using a BKB and they're still slowed. Hell, if he picks up a scepter, he can have close to 50% uptime on that slow, too.

It seems like he'd be a good pick for a #2 position, using his slows and durability to help setup kills for the rest of his team, and ganking hard in the first 20 minutes or so. I watched a Viper yesterday just sit in a full Epicenter and basically go "wait, that's all? That's it?" while turreting damage into whoever was in range.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

Viper is a lot better with the buff to nethertoxin, his main problem is just not having much damage. Against someone above half health or so, he practically has zero damage modifiers, which makes him as viable of a carry as Dazzle. Of course, his damage goes up pretty fast as they start getting low and his overall utility is great, but, carries are defined and ranked by the modifiers they get to their damage, generally. Drow gets 60 agility and trueshot aura. Luna gets to hit 6 things at once and has a flat damage aura. PL has 12491285 copies that all do damage. AM gets 64 pure damage as long as they have mana, which is really 120ish with his ult, and it applies directly to images. Viper gets some slows and a passive that won't do anything when fighting a full health Drow.

It doesn't make him a bad hero, he simply won't measure up to other carries end game. Viper has a great lane phase and peaks early, he hardly needs items to start wrecking face. Rushing phase>scepter is good enough to win most games if his team is at all competent. Typically, you shouldn't rely on him as your only carry, however; if the game lasts longer than 45 minutes their hard carry will win.

Viper is a lot better with the buff to nethertoxin, his main problem is just not having much damage. Against someone above half health or so, he practically has zero damage modifiers, which makes him as viable of a carry as Dazzle. Of course, his damage goes up pretty fast as they start getting low and his overall utility is great, but, carries are defined and ranked by the modifiers they get to their damage, generally. Drow gets 60 agility and trueshot aura. Luna gets to hit 6 things at once and has a flat damage aura. PL has 12491285 copies that all do damage. AM gets 64 pure damage as long as they have mana, which is really 120ish with his ult, and it applies directly to images. Viper gets some slows and a passive that won't do anything when fighting a full health Drow.

It doesn't make him a bad hero, he simply won't measure up to other carries end game. Viper has a great lane phase and peaks early, he hardly needs items to start wrecking face. Rushing phase>scepter is good enough to win most games if his team is at all competent. Typically, you shouldn't rely on him as your only carry, however; if the game lasts longer than 45 minutes their hard carry will win.

Yeah, but wouldn't it be viable to pick Viper as a #2 slot while still having a true carry for the #1 slot? Or alternatively picking Viper and pushing to win the game at 30?

He's really difficult to out-lane with the sheer presence his orb gives him, and due to all the slows he gets, he can often just stand and fight back against someone and win due to the huge attack speed modifiers he places on the enemy... all of which stack. And pairing Veno with Viper should qualify as a crime against humanity.

I definitely agree that the thing he lacks is damage, it just seems like he makes up for that lack by being damned near impossible to kill and making his chosen target pretty much useless. It seems like even if you didn't have a hard carry, up to a certain point Viper could simply debuff the enemy hard carry so much that they wouldn't get anything done, anyway, especially since Viper Strike's slow ignores BKB (gz moving and attacking at 20% of normal for the majority of your BKB's duration.) I guess you'd lose if the game went to like 45+ minutes, but it seems like if that happens, either they were *REALLY* good, or you just weren't playing as aggressively as you should have been.

In other news, pro games with alchemist have been amusing lately. There was a recent game where they sat on Alchemist for a long time, but eventually had to leave him alone, and his farm just fucking exploded the second they did.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

Man, either all pick has really gone down hill or people were being serious when they said you find higher quality players in other game modes. First time I played all pick outside of a stack and we get an enemy PA who goes Skull Basher as her first item and we have a Chen that lanes until 3 and then doesn't leave the jungle for anything until like 25 minutes... and somehow only has basilius, unfinished boots, and meka by time he exits. He never really did anything... Hand of God either came multiple seconds too late or was used when it wouldn't have saved them anyway, and he was always getting killed on his own.

PA's quickly getting up to Viper's level of being frustrating to play against. Nothing feels more cheesy than her blinking to you and immediately critting you for 80% of your health. It was pretty funny watching Axe blow her the fuck up with blademail, though.

---------- Post added 2012-10-12 at 12:43 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Finear

we were talking about viper like 2 weeks ago :3 ?
he was top pick after navi stomped TI1
nothing changed, he is just forgotten

I still don't really understand why, absent external changes, players would simply stop using a hero altogether. It's been bothering me that Tinker is still as powerful a hero as ever, but he hasn't been seen in recent pro games. I know there are some heroes that are good against other heroes, but if you have that counter-pick banned out or on your own team, why wouldn't you use that powerful hero?

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

I've been having fun testing different heroes, trying to make them jungle-capable. What would you consider a good baseline for being "jungle-capable" is? How much GPM and XPM should you expect to have in Radiant jungle in an empty game, assuming no major mistakes?

Is it viable if it's reliant on using a stacked pull to get to level 2?

I was experimenting with an Omniknight jungle and while there's still a lot of tweaking I want to do to try and streamline it, I was able to have Basilius, Soul Ring, and Arcane Boots (what I'd call Omni's "core") at 14 minutes with level 8, but the stats screen showed that as being less than 250 gpm and not much more than 250 xpm. How much xpm would an average duo lane be, assuming there are no deaths/kills on that lane and everyone is in XP range at all times? Would lower xpm be worth trading for higher gpm (since in a pub people assume Omni is a hard support even though he really isn't.)

My buddy's been toying with a Windrunner jungle. The only way I found it to be even halfway viable was to stack the small camp repeatedly, so maybe you could do it with a semi-duo mid lane, but I can't think of any mid duo WR would add a lot to.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

There's dozens of heroes that "can" jungle that aren't usually jungled, but almost all of them are shit in the first 10 minutes, which is basically what matters. You can hit over 400 gpm at 20-22 minute mark easily on heroes from Skeleton King to Sniper to Pugna, but that means you do absolutely nothing for your team in that time. Lycan was the only hero that could farm jungle as fast as a lane, and after he was nerfed to ~Ursa level there aren't that many heroes that you really should jungle with whenever possible.

The question isn't if you can jungle but whether or not you'd be good at it even in the first 10 minutes, because after that you might start losing the game before you get any farm. Almost any hero can farm jungle fine with level 4-5 and 2500 gold worth of items, but if it's worth losing lanes and being useless for 20 minutes is another matter. Jungling "unusual" junglers works alright in a pub game when your team picks 3 carries, you have no confidence in your teams lanes or you're having a fit about wanting to farm on your hero that should be supporting in said game. In a "serious" game it works when you're offlane and can't get anything so you might aswell roam or get something from the jungle, or when you can constantly pull and stack a jungle while being semi lane support.

There's dozens of heroes that "can" jungle that aren't usually jungled, but almost all of them are shit in the first 10 minutes, which is basically what matters. You can hit over 400 gpm at 20-22 minute mark easily on heroes from Skeleton King to Sniper to Pugna, but that means you do absolutely nothing for your team in that time. Lycan was the only hero that could farm jungle as fast as a lane, and after he was nerfed to ~Ursa level there aren't that many heroes that you really should jungle with whenever possible.

The question isn't if you can jungle but whether or not you'd be good at it even in the first 10 minutes, because after that you might start losing the game before you get any farm. Almost any hero can farm jungle fine with level 4-5 and 2500 gold worth of items, but if it's worth losing lanes and being useless for 20 minutes is another matter. Jungling "unusual" junglers works alright in a pub game when your team picks 3 carries, you have no confidence in your teams lanes or you're having a fit about wanting to farm on your hero that should be supporting in said game. In a "serious" game it works when you're offlane and can't get anything so you might aswell roam or get something from the jungle, or when you can constantly pull and stack a jungle while being semi lane support.

Yeah, it's purely for use in solo queue pubs, and only then for heroes that usually have to let the others get farm, but who need farm themselves; Pugna, Omni, Dazzle, etc. None of them are completely item dependent but they all need SOME items (Pugna needs life, Dazzle needs a little mana and life, Omni needs mana, etc.)

But a jungle in a higher level game needs to be capable of performing ganks, right? If that's so, why is Enigma a common choice? Aside from Malefice (which will stun once or twice at most), he has no real way of ganking and his eidolons are way too slow to chase. Is it just because he's such a fast, safe jungle?

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

But a jungle in a higher level game needs to be capable of performing ganks, right? If that's so, why is Enigma a common choice? Aside from Malefice (which will stun once or twice at most), he has no real way of ganking and his eidolons are way too slow to chase. Is it just because he's such a fast, safe jungle?

as you said fast and easy jungle
you can really quickly get mek/dagger/bkb and lvl6, then good blackhole out of woods and you have free tower
even ganks at lvl 3-4 are not that bad

Malefice is one of the best non-ultimate disables in the game against non-blinkers. Enigma is good because he doesn't need items like Stout or Hatchet, doesn't need health regen and he jungles with a build that is similar to what you'd build normally. Unless you're a mongoloid and max Eidolons before Malefice. If enemy gets too far into lane you can walk behind them with 6 Eidolons for an easy gank, and after a successful gank you can easily proceed to push a tower. You can pressure the lane with little effort and still have a Soul Ring and Blink or Mek 10-11 minutes in. At that point you're free to push some towers and enemy will think twice before taking a fight against you.

Best 3 junglers right now are easily Chen, Enchantress and Enigma. They don't need specific items for jungling and can have lane presence without any commitment. Although Prophet has some global presence Enigma outstrips him easily in early farming speed and lane control.

Malefice is one of the best non-ultimate disables in the game against non-blinkers. Enigma is good because he doesn't need items like Stout or Hatchet, doesn't need health regen and he jungles with a build that is similar to what you'd build normally. Unless you're a mongoloid and max Eidolons before Malefice. If enemy gets too far into lane you can walk behind them with 6 Eidolons for an easy gank, and after a successful gank you can easily proceed to push a tower. You can pressure the lane with little effort and still have a Soul Ring and Blink or Mek 10-11 minutes in. At that point you're free to push some towers and enemy will think twice before taking a fight against you.

Best 3 junglers right now are easily Chen, Enchantress and Enigma. They don't need specific items for jungling and can have lane presence without any commitment. Although Prophet has some global presence Enigma outstrips him easily in early farming speed and lane control.

Yeah, Enigma's jungle speed is just unreal, and you can even use conversion to deny creeps to give your other lanes a small XP advantage. I've always thought you were supposed to max conversions first to maximize jungle speed. Is maxing Malefice first just based on the game, or do you just feel that it's not worth it to max conversions first?

Main issue with Enigma jungle is huge mana costs, but you can just chug clarities non stop since he isn't taking any damage to begin with.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

I've always thought you were supposed to max conversions first to maximize jungle speed. Is maxing Malefice first just based on the game, or do you just feel that it's not worth it to max conversions first?